Drawing upon the aims and principles of deliberative democracy theory, the website promotes considered debate in order to establish the "collective viewpoint" on political and social issues.

[1] YourView is supported by the not-for-profit Ourview Foundation (ACN 154 763 970), established in 2011 by the Australian philosopher Tim Van Gelder in collaboration with the public intellectual Paul Monk.

YourView drew on ideas developed within the deliberative democracy movement, which promotes rational deliberation as a means of forming opinions and guiding policy decisions.

[2] Users initially voted for or against a proposition based on a current issue, and were subsequently invited to post comments to justify their adopted stance.

The raw "for-against" vote was weighted by user credibility scores to compute a "collective wisdom" metric,[3] thereby setting it apart from purely aggregative opinion polling.